About Me

Monday, March 17, 2014

20140317.0742

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Enjoy this celebration of the day when the former slave turned churchman is said to have left this life and gone into the life eternal! And keep in mind that not all Irish wear green...

Work continues even on such a day. There are papers that need writing. There are papers that need grading. Some things need to be taken care of in advance of CCCC, to which I am bound later in the week, and I need yet to register for Evil Incarnate. (I could not resist submitting to such a conference, and I am happy to have had my abstract accepted. Now to get the paper drafted among the many others that need my attention...) And there is the baby to care for, as well.

Is it any wonder that I am glad it is Spring Break?

I have never been the kind to take trips for the sake of taking trips. When I have traveled, it has always been for some purpose other than relaxing and seeing the sights--although I have relaxed and seen the sights along the way. (The trip to the BritishIsles in 2012 was good for that.) As such, the "traditional" Spring Break trip has long confused me--while I understand the need for rest (so much more now than before!), the notion of going somewhere else to do it, and then not to really rest once there, has struck me as an oddity. Similarly the celebration of spending a week drunk and sandy.

My curmudgeonliness is not only a thing of bitterness, after all. I honestly do not see the value in getting sand in various crevices--and any trip to the beach ends up with sand in various crevices. Nor am I so fond of drinking that I look forward to being drunk for days on end. (I did that at the New Orleans Mardi Gras one year, and I regret that I do not remember more of it. The fun parts happened before the drunkenness. I think.) And I have never been so connected with my contemporaries that I am at ease among the fun-in-the-sun crowd. I am not the life of the party by any means, introvert that I am, and I know that I am supposed to be, that there is something wrong that I look forward to Spring Break as a time to get more work done rather than to "cut loose" and "have fun."

Part of me wants to snarl and say that I do not need fun. A less stupid part of me wants to point out that fun for me is a quiet thing and in small company. Another part of me, perhaps less stupid yet, suggests that the world does not work according to the calendars of schools, that it goes on despite the gaps in the teaching schedule, and that if I am going to have any claim to part of that world, if I am going to presume to put a foot outside the ivory tower at any point, I need to similarly schedule myself. And so I am going back to work.